Just enjoyed the article in Winter edition of Classic Trains about the Central Cermont Railway. [:)] What particularly intrigued me was the white ballast that came from a quarry at Swanton, Vermont. [:0] [;)]
I realize the colour of the ballst of any RR depends on the quarry it somes from, but white? Seems rather unusual…haven’t seeen any down here.
Any other lines have white ballast “up over”? Or is it a Vermont speciality?
Would certainly make for different photos.
Dave [;)]
Limestone… poor choice for ballast, but it was cheap and available nearby. Railroads will still use it if they can’t get a better quality rock that is harder (ie - igneous or metamorphic)…only stuff that is worse is river run gravel.
Thanks mudchicken, [:)] no wonder I don’t see much of it…a relief really if it’s not that good…
Dave
White ballast is fairly common, I would say more so in years past though. I am in the mining business and one aspect of my job is running a decent size quarry and searching for new limestone deposits. There are many different limestone members throughout the United States and each are unique in chemical content and, as a result color.
For example, in northern Indiana and the Chicago region you have a formation of limestone about 15 to 30 feet deep called the Muscatatuck limestone member on top of 300+ feet deep formation called Silurian limestone. The Silurian stone can be very white and of high quality while the Muscatatuck stone is gray or almost black in some cases. It is also tainted with assorted color clays.
Railroads in the past use to purchase more white stone for ballast, but these days there is a large difference on price between the higher and lower quality stone. (Higher quality stone has better freeze thaw characteristics than poor quality stone and as a result it is more ideal for ready mix applications) Poor quality stone maintains the roadbed just as good as high quality stone, so as a result we see darker shades of ballast these days. Also, limestone is not the only aggregate used as ballast, I have seen a variety of ballast that uses all sorts of materials…….but high quality limestone is the only one which will yield a pure white ballast.
Was it limestone or was it marble? Lots of fine marble has been quarried in central Vermont.
tomtrain-
You could be right about the marble…….I totally forgot it came in white.
Around this area you can tell it’s ex C&NW because of the pink hue of the granite ballast. Never bothered to find out about the source-maybe someone knows.
Jay
CNW pink lady came from the quartz quarrys around Rock Springs Wis. The CV track that I looked at recently indeed had alot of marble ballast in it.
Randy
Most of the secondary and short lines down here are limestone. It’s cheap, and there’s lots of it. For minimal traffic at low speeds it works just fine.
That C&NW pink lady ballast from Rock Springs has gone through some color changes over the years as they get deeper into it. Some is almost maroon while some is almost truly pink. But there is also a little of it that is almost pure white.
The Milwaukee Road used to use gravel for ballast in some places and it was off-white, not limestone either.
Dave Nelson
I remember that wheeler pit run , beach pebbles the Milwaukee used. Wheeler pit was near Janesville. I don’t think it was screened real well , I recall some of those stones being pretty big. In the later years the Milwaukee was using stone from Waukesha sand & gravel on hwy 164.
Randy
Well I am going to go out on a limb here and say that the CV ballast was not limestone.
My understanding is that at least here in CT, the CV got its ballast from deposits in the Palmer MA area. These deposits were schist with a mostly white coloring to them. The NH used mostly central CT trap rock deposits, giving their ROW a more “traditional” blue-grey appearance.
I didn’t realize there was such a variety in the colour of ballast. Something to keep in mind when laying track on your layout, particularly if you want to highlight the diference betwen a main line and a branch.
Dave
Then there is steel mill slag and cinders…
Is it possible that the Vermont ballast is granite[?] On a recent trip to vermont I visited a granite mine (Rock of Ages…the largest granite mine on the east coast at least, I think it’s even the largest in the country). The granite there was primarily white and light gray. I also visited the marble works in Vermont, and followed the trail (formerly rails) to an abondoned quarry. It was very interesting.
Eric (who loves ballast and identifies some varieties in his website at http://www.saltthesandbox.org/rocks/index.htm )
Could the quartzite used around Chicago be from the “Baraboo Quartzite” range of Wisconsin?
At least a few decades back (I’m giving away my age here!) CV did use some marble; not a lot, and a lot of granite – both look white – on the northern division. Southern division – south of Millers Falls – did use schist from the Palmer area, and it was horrible. Don’t. Shatters, crumbles, and wouldn’t hold up a handcar. Limestone looks much like marble, and in fact they grade into each other, but it isn’t as hard and doesn’t hold up as well.
‘Trap rock’ (a form of basalt) is excellent ballast. There is a huge quarry in Westfield/West Springfield, MA which ships trainloads of the stuff all over New England and New York now – that’s where most of the ballast in the upper right corner comes from, I think, nowadays. Greyish when first quarried, but can turn a kind of rusty grey brown with time. Very hard, angular, packs well, holds track well, wears like iron. Good stuff.
what type of ballast changes colour over time? The ballast on the CN line here, when first put down, is gray rock (granite maybe), but within a month or two it is dark brown. Anyone know why?
The UP tracks in Bellwood, Illinois, have a multi-color (e.g., pinking, purplish, reddish, yellowish) quartzite that seems much harder than the IC-spur quartzite. Come to think of it, some of that UP quartzite does look like what I remember seeing in the rocky parks near Baraboo. The IC pink quartzite has a different, somewhat more sandy texture, and is similar to a type of crushed pink quartzite sold as bagged landscape stone. (“Tiffany Pink” and "Pink Starburst are trade names I’ve seen applied to pink quartzite landscape stone around here, although “Tiffany” seems to be applied to other stones as well).
Some “granites” contain iron- and manganese-bearing minerals that might break down to give a dark coating, although air pollution might be another source of discoloration. New ballast along the busy BNSF/Metra line west from Chicago seems to get stained pretty fast, and that’s got a lot of darker granite-like rocks (maybe gabbro or something similar) plus some finer-grained rocks that look like basalts.
Anyone know where BN and IC got their ballast?
Eric